SETTLEMENT AND WORK AT DROUGHSBURN. 28 1 



and it was entirely without light except what came from 

 the room below. 



There, within these four low, narrow walls, lighted 

 by these four dim windows, was included the whole of 

 John's interior domain. It formed at once his workshop, 

 tool-house, dwelling-place and sleeping-room, as well as his 

 library, study and museum. There he lived and laboured, 

 read and studied, poor but contented, yea, happy, a work- 

 man, a student, a thinker, and a God-fearing, upright man. 

 Is it not blessedly true, that our happiness is bounded, not 

 by our possessions, but by our desires ; and that our life de- 

 pends, not on what we have, but on what we wish to have ? 



William Watt, the weaver who held the croft of 

 Droughsburn, and who now invited John to assist him, 

 was no ordinary man. He possessed literary tastes, and 

 was devoted to general self-culture. He was one of the 

 founders of the Alford Literary Society, in the name of 

 which we may trace his hand ; its secretary for some years ; 

 and an active promoter of the Mutual Instruction Union. 

 About a year after John came to Droughsburn, early in 

 1853, Mr. Watt removed to Aberdeen, to become one of the 

 staff of the Aberdeen Gazette, but soon after joined Mr. 

 McCombie, of Cairnballoch, when he founded the Aberdeen 

 Free Press, which is still one of the ablest of our provincial 

 journals. Besides being reporter, he was one of the 

 reviewers on the paper, and did this work with ability. He 

 also wrote one of the Prize Essays on the Sabbath evoked 

 by the liberality of Mr. Henderson, of Park. His health, 

 which never had been robust, was overstrained by this new 

 and trying work, and he died in March, 1854, in his thirty- 

 first year. A high tribute was paid to his memory by Mr. 



